Ralph 2's Raleigh Race Report
Ralph 2’s Raleigh Race Report (R2R3)
In which our Hero has several setbacks but exhibits perseverance
The really short Version:
Swim - 50:14 T1 - 2:49 Bike - 3:09:31 T2 - 2:50 Run - 2:30:50 Total - 6:36:14
Preamble
This was not the performance that I had hoped to have in Raleigh but it is a review of the race that I had. This is my attempt to make some sense of the day and hopefully delineate some lessons that can be learned.
Setting the stage, I have been with EN for 2 outseasons. Last year, I raced a HIM in April in Charleston and the full B2B in Wilmington last Oct. I started off as a short course guy and that was why I joined EN initially. I really never had much interest in the longer races at first. At some point, it became an issue of “Well, I could do that” so last season, I did. My goals then were just to survive the events. I did that thanks to EN but the big issue that I have struggled with is that my long run paces are steady but they are never as fast as my 5k tests predict. Over the course of a longer run, my HR goes up to the point that I have to back off my pace to keep my HR at a sustainable level. I am a big guy (6’4” 215 lb) and I hypothesize that cumulative heat buildup over a longer race is part of the problem. In year 3 of my 3 year plan I have been planning to work on run durability.
Overall, last year’s training went smoothly and I hit the recovery period after my fall race hoping to carry over significant fitness into this season. On Thanksgiving Day, I went for an early 10K run and set a 10K PR by about 4 minutes. The next day my right hamstring became my new worst enemy. I could bike with minimal discomfort but running was a real problem.
Coach P and I had to regroup on the run plan for the OS and so I started doing no hard intervals, just gentle mileage and durability at Z1 Pace. I was not able to test hard during OS but my hamstring progressed to the point that, by the end of April, I was only getting a mild twinge when I ran longer distances (5-6 miles).
Oh yeah, did I mention that both of my previous long course races were FLAT. Like 300 feet of gain in 112 miles flat. Also that I moved in the winter to a place that has hills and that the Raleigh course has over 2000 feet of gain? As far as nutrition is concerned, I have had issues by the time I get to the run in all of my long course races. I practice nutrition every workout (even Trainer Workouts) with 2 bottles of Perform or Gatorade per hour and gels and I can tolerate it fine in RR situations but on Race day, my stomach goes on strike in the early part of the run and I end up finishing on Coke or Chicken Broth (B2B).
At the end of the OS, I had made some pretty significant gains on my bike power (FTP up about 12%) and I had the Blue Ridge Camp lined up to hopefully teach me how to climb hills. I did not, however, get the opportunity to practice riding steady power on hills as I would have liked (read no bike RR due to outside travel). I did a RR run at 2:19 which is about 10 min slower than my HIM last year but, under the circumstances, I was planning to just execute as well as I could and see how it turned out. My swim is my swim, I have been a 2 min/100 kind of guy for a while and I have taken steps to improve that based on the great threads in the forum but it wasn’t going to change before Raleigh.
The Race
The month between BRC and the race yielded no opportunity for a bike RR due to 3 back to back long weekends of out of town travel. In an attempt to compensate, I ran longish (5-7 miles) at building pace each day of those weekends and even on warm days, my pace and HR were pretty close to where I expected them to be based on my run RR.
Since I only live 1 ½ hours away and due to other factors, it was decided that we would drive down the morning before the race and come back the afternoon of race day. Fortunately, after listening to the excellent pre-race podcast, I felt pretty good about my grasp of the logistics of check-in etc.
We left home at 8 AM and arrived at athlete check-in at about 9:45. The line was long but moved pretty well and I was out in time to get most of the 10AM athlete briefing. Bought a few gels and go out of there. We were hungry and ready to eat but it was only 11 and team lunch was not until 12. Thanks to the great planning of Mariah our Race Captain, the venue for lunch was right at the finish line so we sat at our table for 30 and went ahead and ordered pizza. The team showed up and it was great to see everyone from BR Camp and meet the EN folks who were new to me. Lunch was a blast and everyone was up for Race day.
Then to Bike drop-off. The line of traffic into Jordan Lake park on that 2 lane road was the pits. It would be great to organize some sort of team group bike drop off to minimize the number of cars making that trip. Like that truck full of bikes we had in Boone. Dropped off bike, looked over the swim course, got back in the long line to leave.
Drove the bike course on the way home. Overall, the pavement was pretty good but there were lots of hills near the end of the course and lots of turns as the route gets close to town. After the 5000 ft of climb per day at BR camp, I was not overly concerned.
Dinner of Pasta and back to the hotel. Loaded the transition bags and was ready for game day. The only uncertainty was whether it would be wetsuit legal or not so one had to take the wetsuit just in case.
Up at 4 AM, standard breakfast of applesauce, banana, powerbar, and my routine fruit and Quinoa. Hydrating with Perform to try and minimize the amount of Gatorade that I had to drink and vary my carb intake for the day. Since the race was not certain to be wetsuit legal, I elected to wear my Orca trisuit instead of the team kit since I did not have a swim skin and I felt that a one piece suit would do better than the 2 piece kit that I have. HR monitor under suit, greased and bodyglided all up and out the door.
Went downtown and set up T2 at the convention center with running shoes, socks, and race belt (with gels). Got in the long line for busses and headed out with T1 bag and white bag for clothes to be taken back from the swim start. We unleaded at the start and I set up the bottles on the bike (2 behind the seat and 1 aero bottle), helmet clipped to aero bars, sunglasses and bike shoes in bag.
We gathered for the team photo at 6:30 at the swim exit and I hid behind the flag so it was not so obvious that I wasn’t in uniform. The old guys start early so my wave was the second group of age groupers at 7:12. Got in a warm up swim and lined up. There were more folks in my age group than I had thought that there would be but I lined up on the outside a bit and it was not too crowded. I put my goggles under my swim cap though I had never been kicked before. I started out a bit fast but soon got into a rhythm. I really didn’t have a tough time with sighting on the first let but some of the guys around me were pulling up to do the breast stroke and just before the first buoy, this guy pulls up and does a frog keck and whacked my goggles off. No problem, got it fixed and moved on. Rounded the first buoy and started on the second leg. I don’t know if one of the buoys in the second leg was a different color or if it was a trick of the sun, but about 2/3 of the way down the second leg, I took a hard right at this buoy that looked red. It may have been wishful thinking because it was not the turn. I recognized it when I passed the kayak and pretty quickly and was back on course. Final leg was uneventful but lots of folks seemed to be struggling near the end and there were loads of different colored caps coming out of the water with me. I felt that I had held back long enough to give the pros a clear field so from here on out it was game on!
T1 was pretty straightforward, I had a nice spot near the entrance but running down the narrow lanes with my bike was difficult due to other folks sitting down in the path to suit up.
The initial part of the bike was fairly straight forward in that I was able to keep my watts low and not spike it up the hills on the first part of the course. At about mile 10, I started to increase my power to 80% of my FTP as planned and I noticed that I was getting low back pain in the Aero position. I will mention here that I have had my bike fit by Todd at TTBikefit and I have done a HIM and Full on the same bike with no previous problems. It quickly became obvious that I would not be able to hit my goal watts in the aero position and I was hesitant to ride on the hoods even though it made my back feel better. I settled on the plan that I would stay in aero on the flats and gentle hills with as much power as I could generate without making my back hurt and on the hills, I came out of aero early going up and got back into aero and pushed the watts that I could going down. Using this system, I was able to keep up a fairly steady effort but my average ended up about 35-40 watts lower than I had planned for the ride and my VI was sky high at 1.06. In spite of this, I still beat my old HIM bike split (done on a flat course) by 10 minutes which I am taking as a moral victory. The nutrition on the bike was OK, I took in 3 bottles the first hour and a total of 7.5 bottles and 3 gels on the ride but it was starting to feel kind of bloaty near the end.
The course came up to the convention center quicker than I remembered and I didn’t do a good job of getting out of my shoes before the bike dismount line and that cost me a few seconds getting into T2. My T2 was pretty uneventful also and I was quickly out on the run.
I was worried that my back would bother me on the run after the difficulties on the bike but I had no problems with it on the run. I had been warned that the course was hot and so I was extra careful with my pacing in the first miles. In spite of my pace being on plan, I noticed that my HR was significantly higher than it was supposed to be and clearly unsustainable for the entire race (Z4). I walked the first aid station and tried to drink some Gatorade but no luck, I poured some water on my head and put some ice in my trisuit and headed out for mile 2. My HR was back up to Z4 levels within ½ of a mile and I knew that if I kept pushing, I would overheat and be done. I decided upon a walk/run plan where I would run until my HR got up in zone 4 and I would walk until it got back to High zone 2 and repeat. I kept trying to drink at the aid stations but Gatorade was not going down at all, I could drink some coke and handle some orange slices and I kept cooling with water and ice down the trisuit at every aid station. Since the run was uphill on the way out and mostly downhill on the way back, I was able to run more on the way back but was still having to stop once or twice per mile to get my HR back down. I was aggressively going for the shade and staying cool with water and ice as available.
The turnaround at the halfway point was great because I got to see my wife and I headed our for lap 2. Basically this was a repeat of lap 1 but I was able to get some Gatorade down at a couple of aid stations. I took 2 gels on the run but they almost made be sick so I gave up on that. I saw lots of EN teammates on the second lap (the ones that I saw on the first lap were all passing me). The crowd overall seemed to be moving much slower on the second lap and there were lots of walkers (including several talking about their awesome bike splits). The last 3 miles seemed easier , ether because the end was near or it was mostly downhill, or a combination of both. I was able to pick up the pace in the last 3 miles and that was my fastest split of the day, but I missed the negative split by 50 seconds.
Overall thoughts :
1. I like the trisuit over the 2 piece kit because it has less drag on a non-wetsuit swim and you can pour ice down it (although it looks like you have a beer belly or a turd depending on where the ice goes) on a hot day.
2. Practice hill climbing in the mountains is great to build fitness but you need to practice riding steady pace on hills for race day and that is much harder than on the flats. Even if you have executed pretty well in the past, you can't skip RR bike rides without paying a performance penalty.
3. In retrospect, I think that too much running and not enough stretching over the last several weeks made my hamstrings tight and contributed to the back pain on the bike. The lack of a true RR ride leading up to the race obviously hurt as well.
4. Nutrition still seems to need some work in spite of diligent practice. I am considering another plan such as infinit or something that I can tolerate better. I welcome suggestions in this regard.
5. Transitions seem pretty strong overall, Ironman didn’t rank them by time but I feel pretty good about that even though there is more time to be gained there.
6. It is probably time to buy the pointy hat for my next race.
7. This was my first branded Ironman race. I thought they did a good job with the setup and the venue but it was mostly the group of EN Teammates that made raceday one to remember.
8. It certainly was not the PR that I was hoping for but I feel that I executed fairly well in handling the challenges that I faced and I learned a lot that will help me make next time better.
Comments
Sounds like you handled some tough issues on race day. That's a tough course and it sounds like you were prepared, kudos!
I am an Infinit user and while you have to carry it with you, it takes the guesswork out of race day nutrition. I recommend it.
Good luck dialing in some of the finer points. Sounds like you are destined for more endurance distance events
@John - You doing it again next year?
@Mary - Thanks for the kind words.
There is also the Beach to Battleship HIM in October, That is a nice race and the swim is wetsuit legal and with the tide. The ride is flat and the run is shady. I did the full there last year and my swim on the full was only 58 min so the current definitely helps.